


Fault Lines Under the Living Room

by FourthFloorWrites



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Developing Relationship, Fix-It, Gestalt (Transformers), M/M, Multi, Psychic Bond, Transformers Plug and Play Sexual Interfacing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-15 13:41:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29065248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FourthFloorWrites/pseuds/FourthFloorWrites
Summary: A split-second calculation diverts the Enigma of Combination from its original course and on a path to theLost Light. By its energies Ratchet and Rodimus find themselves linked, an intolerable condition that sends them on a quest to retrieve the one thing they seemingly have in common: Drift.
Relationships: Drift | Deadlock/Ratchet/Rodimus | Rodimus Prime
Comments: 29
Kudos: 46





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This one's a long time coming, but it's here! We made it!
> 
> To those who are new to this fic: I wrote and published the first draft, titled We Will Light Our Way With Our Lanterns On, back in May 2020 for Ratchet Week. It was the fastest I had written anything in my life: 26K words in about a week and a half. Inevitably, I burned myself out. The ending was rushed, half the length of the previous two chapters, and failed to build the characters in any meaningful way. Rather than cap off this project I had put so much effort into with a disappointing end, I put it on hold with a promise to revise the whole thing, figuring I would have it done in about a month.
> 
> Well, here we are, in the new year ^^' If you haven’t read the first draft, my recommendation is: don’t! I’m keeping it up for the sake of archiving and to preserve the comments, but I feel this one better accomplishes what I set out to achieve with these characters.
> 
> And if you DID read that one already: thanks for your patience :) Excited to be wrapping this up!

“The Enigma is  _ irrelevant! _ ”

Arcee only had a moment to register that the object was shrinking and not, in fact, hanging motionless in the air, before it committed to its trajectory and slammed into her abdomen, sending her flying.

As her feet left the ground, combat coding took over. Chin tucked and arms locked around the Enigma of Combination, automatic processes registered that her current angle would make it a practical impossibility to avoid landing on her head. To compensate, survival programs directed energon flow away from her processor and all but the most fundamental functions were paused. Unfinished thought threads were placed in temporary storage, completed memories were archived, and self-repair regulations were switched to interstructural processors. Energon lines throughout her body expanded, and her fuel pump dialed down to its lowest pressure setting. Last, her joints relaxed, the momentum of the Enigma enough to keep it close as they flew backward together.

She was in stasis before she hit the ground.

“No—the Enigma is the  _ mission! _ ”

“You are lucky, Arcee. The forces of combination flow freely between Devastator and the Enigma. If it had stayed the same size—”

Arcee missed the commentary, her processor wrapped up in bringing her back online. Self-repair moved first, inspecting fuel lines and active reservoirs for breaches. Several were discovered and flagged, repair nanites deployed to stitch up the micrometer-long tears. Tension and pressure sensors activated in her chest, and reports came back that despite some denting, nothing major had been crushed or misplaced. Her helm briefly swam with liquid repair systems, checking for fractures, split wires, or misaligned parts; finding none, her interstructural processors sent a unanimous command to her brain module to wake up.

The whole process took twenty seconds. Within that time, Scoop saw his opportunity. The Enigma, lying beside Arcee’s unconscious form, forgotten by Galvatron and Devastator as they focused on annihilating each other, was just shy of unguarded. If ever there was a chance to do right by the Chosen One and contribute something meaningful to Cybertron, this was it. Dancing around flying rubble and stray blasterfire from both sides, Scoop dashed forward; no direct attempts were made to stop him, because once again Cybertronians had replaced all thoughts of  _ why _ they were punching each other with  _ how _ they could punch each other harder.

Sensing that an emergency shutdown had taken place, Arcee’s processor bypassed standard bootup and instead loaded the paused threads and backups. Short-term memory was plundered, blasting her with the who, where, what, and when (why was a problem for background processes to untangle) while motor relays and sensor networks reconnected, inundating her with further contextual data. Connections reestablished, her processor performed a final check to make sure no damage had been sustained that would be made permanent by coming online.

Twenty-five seconds. Scoop’s hand closed around the Enigma’s broadcast horn. Results came back clear.

Thirty seconds. Scoop hefted the Enigma to his chest.

Arcee’s optics came online.

Priority one: secure the Enigma. The no-name construction vehicle staring down at her while his stray hand went for a blaster intended to prevent that. Unfortunate choice.

She went for a kick first, a sharp blow across the face that sent him stumbling, his balance off from the weight of the Enigma. Arcee use her momentum to swing herself up and followed up with twin punches: face, shoulder.

Scoop snarled when his nasal ridge buckled. He dropped the Enigma and lunged at Arcee, recognizing that he would have to push her back before he had a shot of pulling his gun. It had not been that long ago he had been part of the Wreckers and those instincts were hardwired; he knew how to use his density as he slammed into her, shoulder first.

He just had not accounted for her being quite that sturdy. Rather than topple over, Arcee wrapped her arms around Scoop’s middle and he felt his pedes leave the ground. He had just enough time to register the dark blue of the sky before he was landing on his head, the crunch of metal the last thing he heard as he was knocked offline. He was out before he knew he’d lost.

Arcee checked that he was offline, then returned to the Enigma. Lifting it took more effort than she had expected; its appearance was deceiving, even knowing the power it held. Its hidden inner mechanisms hummed with living warmth, the pulsing light of its viewchamber like a beacon amid the chaos. She peered into it.

It was not an unfamiliar sight. Galvatron had tipped it to her once, in those last years, as he bragged of his victory over Nexus and his Headmasters. ‘Impure,’ he had called it then. ‘Disgraceful.’

She looked up to the sky, but her twin was out of sight now, lost somewhere in the tumult. His absence only barely lessened the sense of chaos: Devastator continued to pummel the human structure while Decepticons lined up to become part of the rubble. Comm chatter indicated that Autobot reinforcements were en route, but Arcee knew nothing could stop the behemoth. Subdue and separate, perhaps, but with Prowl at the helm, it would only be a matter of time before the team would pull itself together and set out on another path of destruction. One that would probably, inevitably end a lot like this, with someone who only had an outline understanding suddenly ending up with the power to alter the course of history.

She shifted the Enigma’s weight from one hand to the other. When had things gotten so  _ complicated? _

Arcee looked around and spied the abandoned Decepticon shuttle, forgotten while its passengers raced to be Devastator’s next soccer ball. Like Scoop, she too could spot opportunity. She just happened to be better at profiting off it.

  
  


“Decepticons! Our shuttle is being taken! There is a traitor in our… midst.”

He was a fool, Galvatron thought, as he screamed at the Autobot bird-tiger to release him. Any spark made of the same stuff as his own would have all the cunning and brilliance he himself had been so blessed with. He needed to stop forgetting that.

  
  


“Arcee—this is Sideswipe. Do you read?”

“Ask her if any of this mission is salvageable _. _ ”

“This isn’t a  _ mission _ anymore, Kup. I’m going AWOL. Be back in a bit.”

“ _ What _ —that’s not how that—”

The comm link dropped dead. Sideswipe and Kup glanced at each other, though neither knew how to respond to the indifferent silence.

  
  


Drift held up a finger, interrupting the bartender mid-quip. Bar, situated at the halfway point between the spaceport and Mechanics, was the only place Lunar Outpost IX stopovers could wait out the refuel queue, other than loitering in one of the chilled lobbies. As such, it bubbled with dozens of languages, not all of which Drift understood, spoken and vocalized and signed in such variety that the word  _ chatter _ barely did it justice. An Intriessian crew burst into laughter, the floaty, operatic hoots underscored by the deep bass of their captain, only to be swallowed up again by the rush of other voices.

It was an overwhelming place, the energon badly broken down and sure to leave him with a tank ache later, but also the best news source a traveler in Drift’s standing could trust: among the outlandish rumors flaunted by its far traveled and irregular patrons, there was always a seed of something more sinister. He had been eavesdropping on troubling news coming out of Vitrious (a ship manifest that included parts for gamma-charged containment cells and increased traffic through the nearest bubble burst) when the flicker distracted him. A flare at the edge of his senses.

He glanced around. Not a person in sight lacked the potential to kill him: the kalkar in the corner was an established mechanoid hunter, and the one of a species Drift did not recognize, so small they sat on their table, carried on their hip a disabling jack. If Varator was here, though, she was just coming off a job and would have no interest pursuing him, and the jack showed signs of age, kept on in case of emergencies rather than recently acquired for a hit. He knew better than to ignore his instincts, but he also needed to trust his senses, and right now nothing was flagging as significant. He waved to the bartender to continue.

“Bot,” he said, an old joke that landed only when the teller was a neutral Cybertronian; in this case, it earned him polite commiseration and a brief tangent into the grifters that had briefly plagued his host’s elderly parents. Drift smiled, nodded, and frowned where appropriate, grateful the itraxi locals had no way of knowing long-distance comms did not reach this part of the galaxy. Once the mileage of mutual, mild suffering had run dry, the bartender went on with his original story and Drift settled in to mine it for information, setting aside the feeling that something in his universe had just incrementally shifted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m going to be adding revision notes where I remember them, bc this process has been a lot and I want to talk about it.
> 
> That said, this chapter was mostly nitpicky edits, drawing out some moments and cutting down others. The biggest change was adding Drift’s scene at the end; I realized the fic spends a long time with ratchrod and I wanted to make sure the first letter at least made an appearance. We'll get back to him later, I promise.
> 
> Also putting this here because I doubt there will be a better place for it: I restructured the story a bit. What was referred to as a “part” in the first version was completely arbitrary and beholden to my own sense of having reached an end point. Here they have a specific meaning and are used to group chapters rather than the other way around. Chapters are also shorter in this version, because I'm not trying to fit it into a week long event and can let the fic stretch as far as it needs to go.


	2. Part I: Listen - A Commotion, Eager and Anxious

“Hey, you’ve reached _Captain Rodimus_ ’ personal hailing frequency. If you’re calling to complain _again_ about mandatory hab sweeps, please refer to recent events involving briefcases and the hereafter outlawed opening of. If you have news involving foolish, ridiculous, or _nonsensical_ obstacles in our quest, input 1 to be transferred directly to _Megatron’s_ personal comm line. If you have a complaint regarding sign placement, grammatically incorrect maintenance manuals, or that weird temperature difference between floors 7 and 8, input 2 for Ultra Magnus. If you’re lonely and want someone to talk to, input 3 for automatic directions to Swerve’s. Input 4 to be connected with me, _provided_ I’m—”

_Beep._

“Rodimus?”

“ _Blaster!_ Great timing, we just got back from Fortuna. Don’t talk too long, though, Magnus just handed me my prep for the hearing and these datapads are engraved with his personal insignia.”

“Sure, Rodimus. I’ve got incoming transmission from an unknown caller, not laying down any codes I’m familiar with. Tried pressing for details, but all they’re letting slip is they want to talk to you. Want me to patch them through?”

“Hm. On the one hand, unknown caller with mysterious intentions almost always means trouble, right?”

“We’ve ended up in some axel grease for it in the past, yeah.”

“And the reason we set down on Scarvix was to avoid creating more problems while we deal with the fallout from the last batch.”

“I thought it was to give the crew a day off?”

“And that’s why you’re our morale guy. Ratchet would probably tell me to ignore it, right?”

“I guess.”

“You don’t think he would?”

“Not really sure how the CMO’s opinion is relevant.”

Because Ratchet’s vote was the only one he knew.

“Yeah, never mind,” Rodimus said with a shrug, almost losing his balance in the process. “Ultra Magnus would say the same thing, anyway, and he’s counting on me to get to the hearing on time. He cares _so much_ , he ‘summarized’ Brainstorm’s alleged code infringements himself.” He shifted the armload of datapads. The topmost pad was hanging off the edge, preparing for freefall, but trying to tilt it back to safety risked upsetting the rest of the pile.

“Nice of him,” Blaster said.

“Yep, super nice. He went to so much trouble. Really dug into the details, researched historical precedents, looked at the case from _every_ angle. He probably buried his essay on the origins of Decepticon as an adjective somewhere in here.” The datapad tilted and dropped. Rodimus shifted his weight to one leg and kicked with the other, bouncing the pad off his knee and catching it with his teeth. “You know ‘at? Hure, ‘ut the comm hrough. ‘robably just a co’arketer, anyay.”

“Yes, sir.”

The familiar click and beat of a line being transferred. Rodimus deposited the datapad on top of his stack and started walking again, forgoing his office in favor of a detour to the middle decks. The view there was more impressive, the angle revealing the organic landscape that stretched between the _Lost Light_ and Fortuna, a popular interstellar rest stop with enough mechanical business to make it worth the daytrip. Chomskians were their patrons of choice, but a hand over the faction insignia and most folks would let it slide. Walking the length of the _Lost Light_ revealed a subtly changing view as the gleam of the mechanoid hub altered the silhouette of the city, and Rodimus busied himself tracking the shuttles, jets, and personal aircraft traveling in and out, letting it distract him until his comm came back.

“Am I speaking to Captain Rodimus?” an unfamiliar voice asked. Cybertronian, definitely, but otherwise unknown.

 _Cool_.

“Yep, captain of the _Lost Light_ and quester for the Knights of Cybertron,” he said. “What’s up?”

“This is Autobot Arcee, requesting permission to dock in the _Lost Light_ ’s shuttle bay.”

“Arcee?” Rodimus went through the list of all the Autobots he knew, ignoring the space where Arcee’s origin should have been. Some folks, MTOs especially, didn’t like to broadcast that information, and it wasn’t strictly necessary for a personal database search. Regardless, “Sorry, Arcee, I’m not remembering you. Who did you serve under?”

“New recruit. Was working with Prowl for a bit, now Optimus Prime. We’ve met.”

He had to hold himself back from shutting down the call. The datapads wobbled and he quickly righted himself.

“We have?” People who _worked_ for Prowl were strategic about when they released that information. If she really was a new recruit, it was possible no one had explained to her yet that, ultimately, everything led back to him. It was the only justification he could find for staying on the line and not telling Ultra Magnus to initiate an immediate sweep for unauthorized listening devices.

“Well, no. But I crashed a shuttle for you. Into Galvatron.”

“You did?” And just like that he had forgotten Prowl entirely.

“I did. Me and a few others. It didn’t do much, but you and Optimus managed to take care of Vector Sigma anyway, so, bygones.”

Why couldn’t he remember this? It sounded _awesome_.

“Totally,” Rodimus said, feeling a swell of pride as he remembered the moment Optimus had set aside his doubts and trusted Rodimus’ word on the Matrix. Up until that point, his chosen name had felt ill-fitting, like the myriad of function tests that preceded a new harvest’s official classification. Or, in his darker moments, like the Primes of old, who claimed the Matrix’s blessing despite no legitimate connection to it. Optimus had put his faith in Rodimus, though, in his connection to the Matrix, and that faith had been _rewarded_ , not _punished_. For once, his destiny hadn’t been priced in spilled energon.

Not that they hadn’t seen any.

“So you decided to get the brand and make it permanent?” he asked, pulling himself back to the present.

“Yes.”

“Then yeah, come aboard. ‘The more the merrier,’ as Megatron would never say. When do you estimate your arrival?”

“I’ve just breached atmosphere, should be there in an hour.”

“Perfect. I’ll send instructions along to open the shuttle bay doors and will be there to meet you.” He passed the news to Megatron and Ultra Magnus and was unsurprised when only the latter acknowledged the alert, as well as a bunch of forms that seemed incredibly tedious and not worth the bandwidth. Maybe once the hearing was over, he could sit down with his co-captain and remind him of the responsibilities he had agreed to as part of his deal. That would be a proper, leader-like thing to do.

Or he could let Megatron continue to wallow in whatever new misery he had concocted for himself. It certainly made his shifts easier.

He and Arcee exchanged farewells and his comm powered down, leaving Rodimus to strategize. Arcee’s arrival meant he did not have enough time to get back to his office, read through all of Magnus’ files, and make it to the shuttle bay, especially with all the effort it would take to even work himself up to unlocking the datapads. Better to make a good impression on their new guest and bump out the least pressing task. He could do his reading once Arcee was settled.

Walking around weighed down by the burden of knowledge was a drag, though, so he stuck to the part of the plan that involved getting rid of the datapads. He spent the remaining walk to his office (longer now after he had inadvertently walked in the opposite direction while on the comm) thinking about what he could do with the surprise free time. Maybe take a quick lap around the lower decks or make his first official visit to “Visages”. Something fun, carefree, and just barely skirting regulations; something _normal_ , to start the work of convincing everyone, again, that things were going to be fine.

  
  


Ratchet was not stalling.

There was a chance he was overpreparing, but better that than the opposite. The galaxy was a big place, and if he was even slightly accurate in his guess of how far Drift would wander in his search for redemption, he would be touching corners of it even the war had never brought him to. So, an abundance of fuel was necessary, at least enough to last two bots a month plus about half that for the journey outward. Then medical supplies: wiremesh bandages, nanite gel, intravenous lines, sparkstarters, sorted boxes of nuts and screws, antiviral uploads, rust repellant, strut stabilizers, soldering wires… The shuttle was turning out better equipped than some of the mobile surgeries he had worked from during the war; even some hospitals had been dangerously low on materials he now found in abundance. For the first time, he had the resources to make sure nothing and no one would be lost to shortage, and he intended to take advantage of that new luxury.

Following that, the next logical step had been to make the rest of the shuttle comfortable as well. Two Morphy berths with recharge docks. A media library of music and movies to pass the time (the former Cyclonus’ recommendations, the latter, Swerve’s). A few selections from his private engex stash. A box of data blockers he had buried deep among the medical supplies and would claim were standard for any med kit if interrogated.

He nudged the box of Hex pieces against the wall with his foot. Was it alright there was nowhere to sit beside the naviconsole and the berths? He had though Drift would appreciate the economy of a smaller shuttle, but with the cargo loaded the atmosphere was shifting from cozy to cramped. Would Drift feel claustrophobic, reminded of squatters’ dens and Decepticon outposts? Drift was also a high-energy bot, who would probably itch for a chance to spin his wheels from time to time. Were the fuel reserves large enough to accommodate multiple planet stops?

Ratchet’s knuckle had worked its way between his teeth before he realized what he was doing. Dropping his hand, he forced himself to turn around and exit the small spacecraft. He was committed. Out of anyone on board, Drift had done the most to earn this home. If no one else was going to step up and do the right thing by returning it to him, Ratchet would resign to do it himself.

He heard a commotion, eager and anxious, as he stepped out into the shuttle bay. The hangar doors were opening, sunlight slipping through the growing crack, and several parked crafts were being taxied out of the way. Not wanting to get cut off by wandering shuttles, he hurried to the pedestrian entrance, where most of the voices were coming from: a small crowd, loiterers looking for the new source of intrigue. Whirl and Tailgate were among them, providing running commentary as the unwieldly ships skirted just shy of scraping each other’s paint off, so it was no surprise to find Cyclonus standing further off.

Perfect. Though Ratchet and Cyclonus were not on bad terms, neither had ever tried to expand their relationship past the occasional long-suffering glance. If it had been one of the bots who had his spark twisting every time he bumped into them in the hallways, Ratchet would have worried about giving his plan away, but he doubted Cyclonus cared whether the something-like-guilt was visible.

“Cyclonus,” he greeted.

“Ratchet.” The older of the two offered a polite nod, though his gaze returned to the door.

“What’s going on? Somebody forget something in Fortuna?” Ratchet kept his voice light, curiosity without investment. A change in routine could mean nothing, but by now everyone knew it could also be the start of something weird, dangerous, or a combination of the two. Either way, it would end up among Swerve’s stand-up material.

“New arrival,” Cyclonus said. “Arcee of the Darklands: a tested warrior with a spark that rivaled Galvatron’s.”

Might as well have called herself Foreboding of Doom and saved his declarative archives the search. Ratchet wondered if he should move his departure up.

“Is she here? Did I miss it?”

Rodimus’ panicked shouts preceded his stumble into the hangar. Ratchet greeted him with a pointed look, which he shouldered by simply not noticing it while his gaze darted around the room.

“Not yet, Rodimus,” Hoist announced over the loudspeaker. “We’re just getting the last shuttles cleared for landing.”

“Oh, thank Primus,” Rodimus said, tilting his head back as his fans released a cloud of warm air. “Fantastic.”

“You look like you gunned it to get here,” Ratchet said, waving away the smell of an overheated engine.

“No, that would be speeding, which is definitely against spacetime law,” Rodimus said, straightening to flash Ratchet a deeply unappreciated grin. “I ran. I told Arcee I would be here to meet her, and it would make for a pretty bad impression of the ship if the captain failed to live up to his promise.”

“Don’t you have a hearing to be getting ready for?” Ratchet asked, the question slipping past his censors. Slag. That was not the note he wanted to leave on. The stress of his impending departure was getting to him more than he had realized.

Rodimus shrugged, unaffected.

“Magnus gave me all the materials, just need to read them. Won’t take long.”

 _That_ stirred something in Ratchet’s spark.

“Good to know our justice system is under such _attentive_ care.”

“Perhaps this is a conversation that would be _better saved_ for when we are not moments from new introductions,” Cyclonus interjected, his deep bass distracting enough to halt those emotional processes of Ratchet’s that started to loop out of control whenever Rodimus opened his mouth. He set his vocalizer to standby, not trusting it to wait for his command, and wondered whether it would be better to get out sooner. Before his own smart mouth made his worries a reality.

The appearance of the approaching shuttle did not ease his concerns. Starting as a speck above the horizon, all optics were on it as it approached, a little blob of a spacecraft dangling over the city of Fortuna. Big, for a single occupant. Ratchet hoped he was wrong, but he noticed something further odd as it came nearer.

Whirl took care of that loose thread of optimism.

“It’s _purple_ ,” he said, with a coy look at Cyclonus, who ignored it with enviable steadiness.

“It’s a Decepticon vessel.” Ratchet had seen enough in his time. After the fall of Tyger Pax, Autobot regulations had outlawed all colors between navy and magenta for ships, and he could think of no other species brazen enough to steer a spacecraft directly into civilian airspace. “Rodimus?”

“Blaster confirmed Arcee’s ident after our call,” Rodimus said. “Bit of a garish choice for a ride, but it’s her.” He had maneuvered himself to the front of the group, standing at the front like he was putting himself on display for an honored guest.

“That is rich, coming from you.”

“Thanks, Ratch,” Rodimus said, casting over his shoulder a wink and a grin before he turned back to face the oncoming ship. Ratchet’s frown deepened and he ignored the way the gesture reminded him of Drift.

He never knew what the bot had seen in Rodimus. Short-sighted, selfish, and with an ego that could have powered the ship if he could have been bothered to contribute that much, Rodimus’ ability to perform feats no one else would attempt meant he was also prone to making mistakes they neither could have imagined. For all the time Ratchet had spent on the _Lost Light_ , he still had no idea the limits of chaos Rodimus was capable of summoning to it, so he let triage and combat protocols idle in the background while they waited.

It was not a nice landing. The thrusters were still burning several hundred feet out, so they all heard the roar of wind buffeting ailerons as the shuttle struggled to slow itself down. It was only by the combined effects of the _Lost Light_ ’s buffeting shield and the shuttle’s reverse engines that they did not suffer a catastrophic collision, and even then, the shuttle bounced as it finally touched down, coming within feet of kissing Huffer’s personal speeder. Ratchet still did not remember to vent as it struggled through taxiing, twice having to reattempt a maneuver as the combined efforts of Hoist, Rodimus, and a group of volunteers guided it to its designated space. Only when the engines finally shut down did Ratchet hear the collective sigh of multiple hydraulics systems releasing their tension.

“Guess Darkland warriors don’t need to know how to drive,” Ratchet muttered. He thought he heard Cyclonus huff, which was enough to get a chuckle out of him.

That was it, though, because in the next moment Rodimus was rushing to the lowering hatch, his spoiler flicking behind him like an insect wing. Ratchet caught a glimpse of a labyrinthine cargo hold before Arcee stepped forward, filling the space, and descended rapidly. He tensed, ready for something else to come charging out from behind her, but besides a look passed between her and Cyclonus nothing immediately hostile revealed itself.

“Welcome to the _Lost Light_ ,” Rodimus said, standing aside to let Arcee descend. The hatch raised as soon as she was standing on the _Lost Light_ ’s floor, blocking Ratchet’s view again.

“Yes, thank you.” Her tone was clipped, not the melodic veil of sophistication Ratchet had come to associate with Cyclonus, and she scanned the assembled bots with a look of blatant suspicion. Ratchet could relate to that, if nothing else.

He glanced at the purple ship once more while Rodimus led Arcee in the direction of the rec rooms while the rest of the crowd dispersed. Ratchet himself would never believe in anything as a sign or omen, but the sight of the purple plating made old welds ache, and he found his resolve. He would go get a drink. He would attend the hearing. And then, goodbyes or no, he was leaving that night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writer hack: I bit the The Elements of Style to figure out what Rodimus’ dialogue would sound like in that one part. No, I haven’t actually read the book, why do you think I rely on Word to tell me when I’m using too many commas.
> 
> Revision-wise, Ratchet’s more hostile to Rodimus and less so to Arcee. I like Rodimus a lot, but Ratchet doesn’t (yet) so the complaints/grudging respect turned into pure complaints. Tbf, Ratch has a lot to be salty about right now.
> 
> I also added stuff to Ratchet’s lists purely for my own amusement.


	3. Pops of Clashing Tones Burst Through

Arcee walked with measured steps through the unfamiliar ship, observing its workings with a distant curiosity. The lower levels were largely empty, storage spaces and unclaimed hab suites. They did not feel abandoned, though, just waiting. As they ascended through the levels of the ship, the ship populated itself with evidence of inhabitants: voices drifted through closed doors and little cleaning drones rolled by, tidying up in the wake of their sentient counterparts. The smell of warm circuitry hung in the air, the result of many bots living and working together in sealed quarters, and once a pair walked by conversing with enough gusto she could smell the sharp tang of engex rolling with their ventilations.

It was like and unalike what she had expected, an image built on Prowl’s rants and her brief introduction to the ship when they had arrived to help stop Nova Prime. Prowl had described what he considered to be anarchy: overcharged, speeding bots knocking each other into stasis, circuit boosters passed around like energon goodies, and every surface splattered with stains of swapped and spent fuel. He had plagiarized his imagery straight from the narratives Nominus Prime had spread about the Dead End, and she had no way to know whether it had been intentional.

The reality was… nice. Rodimus’ blunt battering ram style of conversation offered not an edge for a word, but his stories were engaging and his instructions inviting, every new room and function of the ship offered if Arcee needed it. They were stopped, briefly, by Nautica, and though Arcee had next to nothing to offer in the way of small talk she found she appreciated being remembered.

It was almost enough to make her feel guilty about her deception. But whether they liked it or not, the bots back on Earth were relying on her. At least the general camaraderie vibe she was getting suggested that the crew might be less inclined to engage in full civil war should their new cargo be discovered.

“And here’s the command deck,” Rodimus said, walking backwards into the open room with his hands perched proudly on his hips. “It all happens here: navigation, communication, pontification. Did you notice the noise the door made when we came through? Nightbeat thinks it’s from the floor denting from so much traffic.”

Arcee glanced back. Rodimus went on, even as a large bot stepped up behind him, the sound of his steps like the march of an entire army.

“If you need anything and you can’t reach anyone, feel free to come up here. I’ll probably be on duty, or—”

“Rodimus,” the bot said, looming over his shoulder.

“Yep, or Ultra Magnus!” Rodimus said, apparently immune to looming.

“I assume if you’re here, chatting, you’re ready for the hearing.”

“Magnus, we’ve got a  _ guest _ . Arcee, have you met before?”

“It’s in an hour.”

“Ultra Magnus,” Arcee said, stepping around Rodimus to offer her hand. “A pleasure.”

The enforcer accepted the handshake, but narrowed his optics at her, while she squeezed the one finger she could get her hand around with a crushing grip she was sure would have felled a lesser bot. Good. At least he had not forgotten.

“Likewise,” he said, doing nothing to his tone to hide how much he did not mean that. He turned once more to Rodimus. “I have not been able to reach Megatron, and we  _ must _ have at least three members of the committee present to deliver a valid decision. Have you read the materials I left you with?”

“I  _ will _ ,” Rodimus said, his cool demeanor dropping for a moment as his spoiler twitched, an almost imperceptible expression of annoyance. “It’s—look, I’ve got time, okay? Right after I’m done showing Arcee around, I’ll take care of it.”

“See that you do.”

Arcee doubted it was standard for an officer to dismiss his captain; perhaps that was why Prowl got along so poorly with every mech on board (besides the fact that he was Prowl). Rodimus led the way off the bridge, but instead of continuing the tour, he walked with purpose, offering no whimsical stories about the sportscar who came tearing up the hallway with a minibot surfing on his hood or the door affixed with a pad displaying “SIGN HAUNTED; DO NOT READ”. Normally, Arcee was glad when conversations ended without obvious expectation that she pick them back up, but uncomfortable silences were another, far less appealing matter.

“Busy day,” she said, the most neutral way she could think of to get Rodimus talking again.

“Yeah, sorry you had to come at a weird time,” Rodimus said, slowing down so they could walk side by side. The hallway ahead was blocked off, a pair of engineers leaning over an open panel in the floor, so they steered to the right, to the outer edge of the ship. Here, the tall windows gave them a view of the planet outside, dimmer now as the day edged into late afternoon. “I don’t think I’m allowed to go into a lot of details about it, but I do need to be somewhere soon, so we’ll have to cut this short. I can call Dri—mm, no.”

Against the backdrop of blue sky, Rodimus’ optics looked muted.

“Who?” Asking questions, that was a thing people normally did in conversations, right?

“Drift.” Rodimus glanced at Arcee; his strides grew longer. Beside them, the windows’ view of a distant city played out like an old vidreel. “Did—do you know him? He was there that day, too, leading us to Vector Sigma before he—well, no, I guess you weren’t there for that part.”

“I’ve heard of him.” He had been a character in a couple of Prowl’s long-winded complaints disguised as briefings. “Is he unwell?” See? She could do compassion.

“No. He’s not here anymore.”

“He’s dead?”

“No! God, no.” Rodimus stopped walking and turned to Arcee, back to the window, his hands grasping unyielding air. “He’s not. He’s  _ not _ . We—he was exiled. Stripped of his badge and sent off, with a full shuttle of supplies and like, infinite shanix. So much. More than  _ anybody _ could spend, and he’ll swipe the bottom of the dram before he even considers buying more coolant. And he’s got these swords?” He mimed poorly grasping a hilt, a curled fist that put strain on his carpal cables. “He’s good with them. He’s fine.

“He’s—I guess he’s kind of like you, actually. He didn’t become an Autobot until the war was pretty much over, and even then, it wasn’t because he—well, I guess this is kind of presumptuous of me, so sorry in advance—it wasn’t because he believed in Optimus. He tried to hide that from me, but… I’ve seen what he’s like when he believes in something. When he feels it in his spark. And I never saw him like that around Optimus, even when he had the chance. I don’t… I’m not sure why he joined the Autobots, actually.”

Arcee worried for a moment that this was about to become an interrogation, but Rodimus had stopped in the middle of the hallway, gaze distant. Like Arcee wasn’t even in the ship.

Rodimus pressed his fingers into his hips, trying to get his thoughts in order. Usually he was better about changing the subject when Drift came up, but he couldn’t let Arcee walk away with anything other than absolute certainty that Drift was still out there, doing his thing.

“He was alone before Kup found him. Totally alone. And now he’s alone again, and what I’m  _ trying _ to say is that he’s not bad at it. Wherever he is, he’s getting things done, and he’s okay because he’s  _ Drift _ . He’s so dangerous the Decepticons didn’t want him back and also probably the best person I’ve ever known.” Not a day went by he did not think about what he could have done better, about what a failure he was as a friend and captain, to have let Drift take the fall for his mistake. The numbers could be buffed out, but the memory never would be, the knowledge that his decisions had pushed his best friend into meaningless sacrifice.

He glanced back. Arcee had not moved, watching him with the same careful expression she had worn throughout the initial tour.

“Anyway. Like I said, I’ve got to get this done. Want me to call someone to show you to the canteen?” He pulled up a list of candidates on his HUD, though frowned on discovering it was built on remnants of the old crew roster. Cosmos  _ would _ have been perfect.

“No, that’s alright,” Arcee said, waving away the offer. “I’ll be fine on my own.”

Rodimus shrugged.

“Suit yourself.” He waved back over his shoulder as he started on his way to his office. He would go plow through Magnus’ documents, take care of the hearing, and then catch up with Arcee to finish the tour. Therewas still the whole upper deck to explore, plus the datawork he always put off to the last minute: assigning a visitor’s hab, determining length of stay…

It struck Rodimus that through all their talk, he had neglected to ask about Arcee’s reason for boarding.

“Hey—” He turned back around to an empty corridor.

  
  


45 minutes until he needed to be in the chamber and still just halfway through the first datapad with a pile more still on his desk. He scrolled as fast as he could, eyes latching onto an important word or phrase every few seconds. Details weren’t important anyway; all he needed was the general shape of the document.

If Drift had been here, he would have all of this read and summarized before the group got back from Fortuna. He would have talked Rodimus through each of the datapads, with notes on central points and purposes, and responded to any confusion on Rodimus’ part with patience and compassion.

Rodimus shoved the datapad aside and grabbed the next. He also would have known what the frag  _ mens rea _ meant.

  
  


20 minutes. He had moved finished datapads to the floor, but there was one less in that pile than he had expected, which meant he had either lost the ability to count or one of these was going to be read twice, because like slag he would be able to remember which one it had been.

Drift had told stories of his adventures pre-Autobots, when things were going wrong and Rodimus needed the distraction. Sometimes the stories had worked: the action was fun, imagining Drift with a cloak flowing out behind him as he cut through hoards of pirates and slavers, doing ridiculous acrobatics to get himself out of the most unlikely situations. Often though, Rodimus had cut him off halfway through, his guilt only doubling with the realization that Drift, on his own, had done much more important, bad-ass work than what he was doing as Rodimus’ second in command.

Rodimus grimaced and scrolled back to the top of the datapad. Drift was also much better at reading the words in front of him, and not letting them roll by like strangers’ faces in a crowd.

  
  


He needed to be in his seat in 8 minutes. It would take 5 to walk there, 2 to sprint, and there was still what felt like a mountain of documents to get through, a planetful. They were multiplying. And yet he now found himself stuck on a sentence, unable to move on though the meaning of the words dulled further with each pass over.

“ _ If in the case that we, the committee and the jury, respectively, believe it fair to say the resolvement of the hearing, that is, the summation of all available evidence and the dispensing of corrective measures, consequential measures, or both, at bar depends upon the judicial stigmatism, defined in section 2 subsection A, of the parties deciding it, then— _ ”

What was Drift doing out there? More of the same, Rodimus guessed, but this was a different universe from the last time Drift had been alone and wandering, no longer actively burdened by their war but struggling to heal in its aftermath. Maybe he was teaching people about Spectralism? He had tried so hard with Rodimus, balancing the philosophical, squishy stuff with the hard physical aspects of the practice to keep him engaged. He did not think he could trade blasters for swords as Drift had, but he liked the work of it, the focus of maintaining his body and projecting his intention through metal he could not feel.

He had never been very good at meditation.

  
  


1 minute. He ran.

  
  


“Now that our captain has deigned to join us—Brainstorm, you are being held as a defendant in the first hearing of the  _ Lost Light Internal Legal Affairs Committee _ . You have been summoned so you can provide your subjective account to supplement objective data and information regarding those events that were outlined in the datapackets provided previously. You are to speak before an audience of your peers. Rodimus?”

“Yeah, all that. Now, about your faceplate—”

“I apologize, captain, but it is the right of the accused to submit preliminary questions before we begin summation.”

“Oh. Yeah, yeah. Any questions?”

  
  


Ratchet felt guilty for it later, but Rung had been between him and the door, and if he had spent a second longer in that purple cell his sirens would have gone off. He had been pulled to the witness stand for a handful of Aequitas trials. He had had to maintain his composure as colleagues and friends spoke of vile atrocities and crimes committed against the Cybertronian body, and he had managed it. Evening high grade had been partially to thank, strong enough to keep him from questioning whether he had made the right choices, but in the moment, he had stood fast and performed his duty.

By contrast, he hadn’t even had to do anything in the lilac hearing chamber and it still felt like his spark was going to burn out.

He had known Brainstorm would get away with minimal consequence, because any ship that had Megatron onboard had to reorient its approach to things like law and repercussions. That did not make the injustice of it sting any less, nor could he forgive the way Rodimus had obviously zoned out in the middle, the whole thing so much a sham he could not even give it the dignity of insincere engagement. As though the rest of this crew were in on this, trading one gross miscarriage of justice for another. As if, by placing him in the audience, they expected Ratchet’s approval.

Enough of this. He did not stop to admire the Scarvix sunset as he made his way to the shuttle bay, plating prickling every time it touched the paneling of the ship, knowing who had bought it. He had subspaced the last piece of equipment he would need—a remote tracking device—and, with a grunted goodbye to First Aid, left the med bay. He was scheduled for a recreational fly in a few minutes; provided he made this final escape without drawing attention, he could have up to a full day before anyone noticed his absence, by which point he would be out of range of reasonable pursuit.

The bay was quiet compared to its earlier clamor, just the occasional creak of settling metal and shuffling of someone else accessing one of the parked crafts. The perfect conditions for a clean departure. He found his shuttle where he had left it and input the code to unlock the hatch, allowing himself to cast a paranoid optic back over his shoulder, though he knew no one was coming to deliver a surprise goodbye. As the ramp descended and he was greeted once more by the clutter, he was glad he had left himself no spare time to further fret over inventory.

He took one step onto the ramp.

A pained yelp had him wheeling around again.

“Frag it, fraggitall,” Ratchet groused as he stole between vehicles, searching for the sorry mech with the missing limb or whatever it was they had done to themselves. “ _ You alright? _ Slag this good for nothing ship,  _ need help? _ Something  _ always _ has to go wrong, can’t even get a cube of energon without,  _ what happened? _ Damned super scraplets and sod all.”

There was no follow-up sound, but the light spilling out the open hatch of the Decepticon ship made it an easy guess where the noise had come from. Ratchet slowed as he approached, one hand drawing a pistol from his subspace. As he crept to the edge of the ramp, he was able to observe more of the interior: it  _ was _ a cargo hold, with racks upon racks of what looked suspiciously like Earth design weapons, sized up to Cybertronian standard. The ground was a mess of parts, ammunition, and miscellaneous junk, but Ratchet did not have time to inspect it closer as his optics were drawn to a shriek of red and orange standing off to one side.

“What are you doing, Rodimus?” he asked, stepping up without a second thought, his voice dryer than Swerve’s mugs during routine inspection.

Rodimus swiveled around. He was clutching his helm, his optics flashing a half-second before they dimmed to a relaxed half-glow.

“Ratchet!” he said, waving with the hand not currently pressed to his head. “I was just looking for Arcee. You seen her?”

“No.” Ratchet looked around again, trying to figure out what had made Rodimus think there might be a bot hiding in this mess somewhere. Stacks of cargo boxes had been shoved from the walls to further compress the narrow walkways between shelves and larger items had been tossed, sometimes quite carelessly (Ratchet’s spark curled at the sight of a box of grenades, broken open with its contents rolling into a corner), around the room. Something sick and righteous pooled in his spark.

“You were searching her ship?” he demanded. “Does Ultra Magnus know about this?” He had already known Rodimus was unashamed to commit serious privacy breaches, so shame on Ratchet for not imagining he could go even—

“No, of course not,” Rodimus said. He dropped his hand to gesture to the mess. “I just got here a few minutes ago.”

Which, actually, was a fair point. Even if Rodimus was lying, Ratchet was not sure how one bot could cause this much chaos in the time it had taken him to get here from the hearing. Though, to be further fair, it was Rodimus.

“I was looking for her on the upper decks,” he went on, “and when I couldn’t find her, I asked security for a quick sweep. First thing they found was a surveillance shot of her headed this way, so I came to check while they search the rest. Thought it made sense to check her shuttle first.”

“Right.” Mollified now that he realized his accusations had been baseless, Ratchet remembered that his window to leave was steadily narrowing. “I’m sure she’ll turn up.”

“Wait!”

Already turned halfway, he considered ignoring Rodimus’ call. It would be too suspicious, though; no one out for a brief stroll would be so anxious to leave. He looked back.

“What?” he snapped, hoping Rodimus would register his testiness as Ratchet’s standard fare.

Rodimus hesitated, but went on, “You were around humans for a while, right?”

“Yes.”

“I picked up a radio frequency while I was searching,” Rodimus said. “Think it’s coming out of this ship. It’s not one I recognize, but with all this human tech onboard, I was wondering if it might just be something from Earth. Could you check it out?”

“You think it’s relevant to finding Arcee?” Ratchet asked.

“I don’t know,” Rodimus said, a wiser answer than Ratchet had expected. “It could be nothing. But on the off chance it’s not, I don’t want to just ignore it.”

Ratchet bit back a comment about how he was finally gaining some common sense and went to activate his transceiver. Just a few more seconds, and then he was gone.

“I was only on Earth for a few years,” he warned. “Not enough time to learn  _ everything _ about the planet.”

“Yeah, but you’re here.”

Rodimus pinged him the frequency and Ratchet tuned his receiver to it. Right away, he was not surprised none of their scanners had picket it up. Even within the ship, the pitch was grainy and distorted, like it was coming through a busted speaker. Between the static, pops of clashing tones burst through, like the bubbles of noxious fumes that had floated along the River Alkaline. It was bad enough to make him start to question why Rodimus had pinpointed it here, but he cut off that line of thought before it could progress further, still intent on getting back to his own shuttle.

“It’s not like anything I heard on Earth,” he reported, switching off the transceiver. Quiet though it might have been, the choppy signal was grating.

“Hm.” Rodimus put a knuckle to his chin.

“What?”

“Arcee didn’t say why she was coming, and she’s avoided me when I’ve asked,” Rodimus said. “I know, it was stupid to let her on without asking what she was doing out here. No need to say it.” Ratchet’s lips tightened, but he let Rodimus continue. “But it is weird, isn’t it? A Decepticon ship, apparently straight from Earth, piloted by a bot as old as Cyclonus and yet freshly minted as an Autobot? Why come out all this way?”

“Weird string of coincidences, sure,” Ratchet said, angling himself to make it clear he intended to leave regardless of whether Rodimus’ theory reached a conclusion, logical or otherwise.

“Maybe,” Rodimus said. “Except for one thing: earlier, when she called in to request clearance, she said she used to work for Prowl.”

Oh.

“You should call Ultra Magnus,” Ratchet said.

“Yeah.”

The still of the shuttle bay was torn through with the rev of an engine coming online.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just because this is a dratchrod fic doesn’t mean I can’t take some time to rag on Prowl. I _think_ this is the last time he pops up so if you're (understandably) sick of him, dw, you're free.
> 
> Major revision in this chapter: Arcee is not completely socially broke, just awkward enough (a la moi) to stumble headfirst into conversations she is nowhere near equipped to handle. My feelings on Drift, Rodimus, and Optimus have changed since I wrote the first draft, and that comes out a little here, in regards to how Rodimus reflects on Drift’s sacrifice. The problem with revising a story over the course of almost a year is that my opinions have changed even between working on different chapters. Gotta stick to it now that it's up!


	4. Opposing Melodies Overlaid

“The _frag!_ ” Ratchet startled, whipping around to look out into the hangar. No one else was supposed to be leaving now. He had chosen this time because he knew he would be alone when he—

“Hey!” he shouted again. “ _That’s_ —”

  
  


Arcee did not believe in luck, but she knew probability, and the numbers said, if in the course of your escape you happen across a fully stocked shuttle, unlocked, abandoned, and ready to fly, you do not let an opportunity like that slip by. With the hatch manually locked and an okay from the controller to go ahead, she engaged the engine and initiated an abbreviated takeoff sequence. Stealing a shuttle and taking off without a word would likely leave more of a mess than she normally would, but Optimus could handle the cleanup. At the very least, it would give him something to do other than ignite hostilities between literally everyone he knew.

She had done him and everyone else back on Earth a favor, she told herself as she maneuvered the little craft, and had taken steps to minimize the effects her espionage would have on the _Lost Light_. She had wiped the shuttles ident codes and removed its integrated tracking system, making it functionally invisible to Decepticon scanners. With their infamous brand of luck, the _Lost Light_ crew would be so wrapped up in their next misadventure they would forget about the purple eyesore in their hangar. It would sit, and the Enigma, carefully hidden and without more lives to interfere with, would sit with it, forgotten for another however many more millions of years.

  
  


“Magnus, I need a _team_ in the _sky_ , Arcee stole one of our shuttles and is headed toward upper atmosphere. Do you— _slag_ , Ratchet, what the _frag_.”

The hatch had slammed closed under Rodimus, unbalancing him and nearly sending him tumbling into one of the storage racks. He had seen Ratchet ascend to the navigation deck but assumed it was with the intention to investigate Arcee, not to start pressing buttons. He ran upstairs.

The navigation deck was not an open space like that of the _Lost Light_. The ceiling was just tall enough that most heavy hitters would make it in without having to duck, though not all, and the singular transparent viewshield was positioned at the end of a long line of various consoles; the rest of the visuals were delivered via vidfeed, all of which were online and projecting simultaneous clashing views of the _Lost Light_ shuttle bay. It was only slightly less messy than the cargo bay, by virtue of the fact that there was less stuff. What was present was in a similar pattern of disarray, though Rodimus barely noticed it even as he tripped over a crate wedged into the space at the top of the stairs. The pilot’s (or pilots’, depending on the size of the operator) seat was situated in the center, facing the viewshield, and was currently occupied.

“What are you _doing_?” Rodimus demanded, skidding to a stop.

“Pursuing,” Ratchet said, raking his fingers over the controls. “That’s _my ship_.”

“What?” Rodimus asked. He grabbed the back of the chair as the shuttle jostled again.

“Either hold on or buckle up. _Hoist_ —” a panel opened and a comm mic sprouted up “—that bay door better stay _open_.”

“Sure, Ratchet,” Hoist said, voice nervous as all slag. There was another crew member earning a reprimand, but before Rodimus could name the infraction the shuttle juddered again and pulled forward. Rodimus stumbled, losing his grip.

“Ratchet!” The videos on the viewscreens were live, the images too disjointed to provide any more information than that they were moving.

“I told you to hang on.”

“No, this is insane.” Rodimus leaned over, trying to slap at the console. “Ratchet, you need to land right now. As your captain, I’m _ordering_ you to—”

“You’re not my captain anymore.”

“ _What_ does _that_ —”

Ratchet hit the launch key. The floor shot out from under Rodimus.

He felt himself fly, then crash, plating vibrating from that first impact, then further as the mess of the cockpit crashed on and around him. The smaller boxes and pieces of junk stung where they struck, but it was the unsecured crates skidding across the floor that forced him to dodge, lest he be pinned. He was still shouting at Ratchet, but his words were muffled by the wail of an engine being pushed too hard too soon at too low an altitude. Though he still had no sense of direction, Rodimus could see they were no longer on the _Lost Light_ : metal interiors had been replaced with a dirt ground and open sky, the viewshield revealing a quiclky approaching night. Arcee’s shuttle was a distant, brilliant fleck amid the gathering stars.

As his gyros recalibrated to the g-force, Rodimus regained the ability to stand, and when he pushed off the wall, he made a decision. Ratchet was not in the mood to talk, that much was obvious, and the only reason Ratchet lacked a Rodimus-level reputation for insubordination was because his own conclusions and convictions tended to match those around him. Or maybe it was that other bots trusted Ratchet so thoroughly they became convinced whatever course he had set was the best one. Either way, now that Ratchet had an idea, there would be no talking him out of it, leaving Rodimus to either find a way to bail out of the shuttle rapidly approaching exit velocity, or help him in tracking down their wayward guest. Creeping, careful steps through the wreckage of the cockpit got him back to the pilots’ seats, where at last he flopped down beside Ratchet.

“How can I help?”

Ratchet glanced at him, a wary look Rodimus thought was undeserved. Whose idea had it been to chase the possible spec ops agent?

“Slag if I know,” Ratchet said, refocusing on the viewscreens. “I got us this far on assumption and basic understanding of the physics, but I’m no master of Decepticon technology. You have any clue how this thing flies?”

No, but Rodimus had hijacked enough ships, speeders, and exasperated shuttleformers to have an idea of where to start. He started to play with the controls, trying to get a sense of the layout. There were a few physical switches and dials, but most had to be accessed either via cable linkup (which, even with the most up-to-date antiviral patch, courtesy his co-pilot, he was not touching) or the dashboard touchscreen. Built to accommodate much larger hands than his, he had to stretch to reach the strip of menu tabs along the top of the screen, but through sheer persistence found a way to make it work. Some fiddling here, a couple settings nudged this way and that, and they soon found themselves gaining on the escapee.

“Awesome,” Rodimus said, grinning at Ratchet with unreturned pride. “What’s next? Weapons?”

Ratchet did tear his optics aside for that.

“I’m trying to recover that shuttle, remember?”

“Eh, just checking.” Rodimus continued exploring the controls and adjusting to improve their speed. Ratchet was right that the technology was different from Autobot standards, but it was built on the same governing principles, and through that, plus careful attention to the way his changes affected the way they hugged the air, he was able to work out the new layouts and jargon. He reduced their drag and improved acceleration, and now they were coming up on the little getaway ship right as it was preparing to break atmosphere.

“So, are you going to tell me what the deal is with that shuttle before we catch up, or are you going to make me wait until _after_ we bring her in and Magnus has read her full Mirasda rights?” Rodimus kept his tone casual and spirits relaxed as he tuned himself to the ship. It wasn’t a challenge; his hands liked having things to do, and here there were many things to keep them busy.

“None of your business.”

Rodimus glanced over at Ratchet, hands falling still.

“Pretty sure a member of my crew deserting is entirely my business,” he said. He pointed to his own Autobrand. “Captain, remember?”

“I couldn’t possibly forget.”

Rodimus’ frame wanted to sink in and retreat from the thorny presence, but he refused it the luxury. He knew Ratchet did not like him. A lot of people didn’t, but Ratchet was nice and up front about it, never one to hide his opinions for the sake of decorum. A refreshing change of pace.

“Good,” he said. “So, you know that you can either tell me now, or we can reconvene the Internal Affairs Committee. Your choice.”

“Another hearing, good. You can dispense more of your justice.”

“It’s a _committee_. Ultra Magnus and Advocate Xaaron both agreed—”

“You know the problem with the _Lost Light_?” Ratchet asked, optics fixed to the viewshield. “It’s not the people. They come already having made mistakes, they make more, and they decide they’re going to do better. That’s great. I wish—honestly—we’d made more space for that before. Maybe then we wouldn’t be where we are.” His fingers tightened around the yoke. “The _problem_ is that it _moves._ Folks get to leave behind the messes they made while they learn to clean up, but they can never go back to fix what they’ve already messed up. We don’t stay in one place long enough to make it up to the people we hurt along the way.”

Rodimus’ hands retreated fully from the display, hovering just over his lap.

“This is about Drift,” he said.

Ratchet did not meet his optics.

“I need that shuttle.”

The warning came comically late. A big red message appeared on Rodimus’ touchscreen, he said, “Ra—” and then his seat was gone. Rodimus slammed into something and barely had time to register that it was the ceiling before he was being tossed again, this time into the far wall. The junk flew with him, disorienting him further, though even more so was the flailing amalgamation of limbs he recognized as Ratchet only when they were on the move again.

“The frag was—” Ratchet demanded, cut off as they hit the opposite wall. The usual intimidation Rodimus felt around him was for once offset by the way he scrambled and clawed for purchase against the slick purple floor.

“Satellite,” Rodimus coughed out, pinned against the wall by Ratchet’s frame. He too was scrabbling, but his were panicked movements, limbs desperate for control as the world rocked and shifted around him. He managed to get hold of Ratchet’s back kibble, but that was ripped away as the craft swung sideways and they were sent plunging again. Rodimus winced as he landed on Ratchet, processor momentarily occupied with the thought of how Drift would feel if he found out Rodimus had crushed his favorite person.

Grateful for the fact he was the sole audience to his own rambling thoughts, he forcefully switched tracks.

The shuttle was still rocking, its contents tumbling with Rodimus caught in the middle, but now he could see a path through the chaos. The next time they went flying across the cockpit, he angled himself to the pilot’s seat, catching it under his arm and clinging until gravity started to shift back in the other direction. Then he swung over and grabbed the yoke, pressing his pedes to the floor while pulling up with all his strength. The rocking started to reduce in extremes, so he reached back over to the touchscreen and hammered out desperate commands, even as he felt himself start to slide off the seat.

The shuttle gave a last aerodynamic twist and then swung back into balance, finding its equilibrium like the peace that followed an electron storm.

The final crash of debris was followed by near silence, punctuated only by a few last objects clattering to the floor like applause. Rodimus noticed his fans were running, forcing the stress out of his frozen body. He looked over his shoulder. Ratchet was glaring at him from the floor, banged up but so fantastically alive.

“Y’know, Ratchet, there’s a saying on this ship: ‘Hold on or buckle up.’ Should’ve listened.”

Ratchet’s expression pinched and his biolight flared. Rodimus grinned.

“Stop looking at me!” Ratchet snapped. “Where’s Arcee?”

Rodimus turned back to the view screens: half displayed Scarvix, stretching out like a map beneath them, and the rest showed empty space, shimmering dust-like stars. No shuttles. Just them, alone at the threshold.

“Uh.”

“Dammit. Dammit, _dammit!_ ” Ratchet’s fist pounded the floor and a few more tinkling fragments rained down. “Frag! That damn hearing, frag it all!” His voice was rough, bleating static in place of words as his temper raged. Rodimus watched, no idea what to do.

“It’s an Autobot shuttle,” he tried. “We can track her.”

“And? What good will that do?” Ratchet demanded of the floor. “She knows we’re chasing her. She won’t stop, and she’s got enough fuel to get to the end of the galaxy if she knows how to use it. Frag it _all!_ ”

“You could take another shuttle,” Rodimus said, but Ratchet was not listening to him anymore, lost in his own rage as he lay blame on the shuttle, Arcee, space itself, and, of course, Rodimus.

This time, when Rodimus’ frame locked up, he did not fight it. He felt small. Drift would know what to do here. Drift, whose absence was the reason they were out here, would know how to push Ratchet’s anger until it reached a breaking point, a height so ridiculous that Ratchet, practical bot he was, would have no choice but to give it up. And he would do it effortlessly, like it was a game they played together. Rodimus lacked both the wit and the bravery to try to take his place, leaving him useless to soothe Ratchet’s wrath.

Desperate for a distraction and looking anywhere but Ratchet, Rodimus finally noticed the glow. A red light, easy to miss against the purple, shone from behind a panel in the wall. The rest still tightly sealed, this one had been knocked loose somehow, and something was sneaking out. Rodimus could not explain why, but it felt alive. He peeled himself from the chair and walked across the room, indifferent as he passed Ratchet, whose ranting had devolved to muttered cursing.

As the fright of being hurtled around the cabin wore off, exhaustion swept into its place. Ratchet was built of old metal. He could feel the creak in his joints as he pushed himself to standing, servos swaying before he found his balance. He would need to check himself over, make sure none of the blows he had taken would degenerate faster than his shabby self-repair could keep up with. Unlikely, but always a possible side effect of not having died yet.

He looked around the bridge. What a mess. At least there had been a measure of order to the junk before they took that hit; now, pure chaos, in the form of broken crates and discarded equipment. How did he expect to find Drift if he couldn’t get off-planet without twelve things going wrong? Especially when only half of them were problems he had expected. Being delayed by events on the ship and caught as he tried to make his departure? Sure, that was easy to see coming. But a rogue Autobot stealing his shuttle in the moment his back was turned? If that was what happened before he made it out the front door, what manner of nonsense could be waiting out on the rim?

He lacked the energy to think about or even acknowledge the one less-than-disastrous surprise, that Rodimus would offer a ship to replace the lost speeder. Desertion was not a crime on the _Lost Light—_ all crew members were free to come and go as they pleased—but he had expected Rodimus to gape at the thought of someone else going ahead to fix his mistake. In the scenarios Ratchet had envisioned as he snuck supplies onto the speeder each evening, Rodimus would hold Ratchet on board while deliberating the best course of action, then use the next available excuse to forget about it, stalling until Drift had flown completely out of reach. It hadn’t occurred to Ratchet that Rodimus might just let him go.

“Hey, Ratchet,” the subject of his thoughts said, “turn your receiver back on.”

Ratchet turned around. In his spare minute, Rodimus had pried away a panel from the wall, revealing the inner workings of the ship. Nestled inside and exuding a nauseating red light was something… not alien, but unfamiliar. It pulsed with the same patterns as Cybertronian biolights and Ratchet’s plating prickled at the mild radiation, but he struggled to focus his optics on it. It seemed to melt into the background until the light appeared independent of its vessel

Out of some parts curiosity, some resignation, he switched on his receiver.

Sound assaulted him, opposing melodies overlaid so many times it was impossible to follow one without sinking into every other. It was loud, lows and highs crashing, dizzying the senses with the crush of music, and he switched it off, face contorted in a grimace.

“Guess you found it,” he said. “No surprise she left it behind. That sounds like what you would hear if you put Soundwave through the scrapper.”

“Any idea what it is?” Rodimus asked.

“It’s not from Earth,” was the best he could do.

“Figured that. I think these are Cybertronian glyphs on the casing, but way old. Maybe Cyclonus would recognize them?”

Rodimus tilted his head and Ratchet caught the way the light distorted off his dented plating.

“What did you do to yourself, anyway?” he asked.

“Oh, this?” Rodimus touched the dent. “Was searching the shelves and a box fell on me.”

“What, were you checking if Arcee was hiding up there?”

“If you haven’t noticed, Ratchet, there’s a lot of _weird_ stuff on this ship,” Rodimus said, thumb pointed to the object’s photonic core. “I was trying to be thorough.”

Perhaps just to be contrary, Ratchet stepped closer to inspect it, forcing Rodimus to move out of the way.

“It’s probably just a Decepticon generator,” he said. “They like to make all their tech intimidating. Some sort of cable measuring contest.”

“A generator?” Rodimus repeated. “Ratchet, it’s _singing_.”

“It’s not—” Ratchet bit back the rest of his response and squeezed his optics shut, begging himself to find the patience to deal with Rodimus just a little longer. Just until they could get back to the _Lost Light_ , install him on another shuttle, and let him be on his way.

An idle thought passed through his processor— _Drift would know how to deal with him_ —and the object pulsed.

Once, twice. A flash.

Her long-range scanners detected the massive energy pulse. Damn. Arcee had not thought they would get the Decepticon shuttle airborne again, let alone chasing her. That passing satellite had been both a gift and a curse: she was free, but now they were no doubt aware of its cargo.

Still, she considered the mission a success: the Enigma was out of the hands of those who would use it to extend the war. With that piece off the field, an opportunity had opened up to maneuver around Prowl and start to fix his mess. A tall order, but one she could handle.

Leaving the _Lost Light_ to its fate, Arcee absconded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Actually not much to say about this chapter! More nitpicky stuff, and cut down on the flying-around-the-cabin scene. Just didn’t feel like it needed to be that long.
> 
> In some third version of this fic that no one, especially me, has the patience for, Arcee sticks around to provide harsh yet fair commentary on the disaster trio’s poor communication.


	5. Part II: Breathe - Thoughts Expand in Blooms

“Try again.”

“Yes, sir. Rodimus, come in Rodimus. This is Blaster, coming to you live from the _Lost Light_ command deck. Do you read me? Status and further instruction requested. Over.”

Years of handling the Wreckers’ fluctuating schedules meant it was no effort for Ultra Magnus to resist rubbing his optics as he watched the progress of their three recovery speeders. Siren, Crossblades, and Waverider had launched with minimal deviations from standard procedure (Crossblades would receive a write-up for nonessential helical rotation) and tracked Arcee’s shuttle up to acceptable pursuit range. That was where the chase had stalled, as Rodimus had provided no further instructions and protocol required command from a captain before they could proceed. Either captain.

Protocol fell apart when one refused to leave his hab and the other had stopped answering his comms. Magnus started mentally writing up a proposal for temporary transfer of pursuit command responsibilities while they waited.

The control panel refreshed as the latest information poured in. The speeders were entering upper atmosphere, rotating in pyramid formation in the shuttle’s trail. Acceleration had decreased to the minimum required to maintain orbit and altitude held steady as they sailed through Scarvix’s exosphere.

“Ultra Magnus, I have a visual on Rodimus’ ship,” Bluestreak reported.

“Pull it up.”

The datafeeds compressed to the right of the screen, replaced with the compound live feed from the speeders, displaying the shuttle’s stern, the glow of its thrusters closer to a lightbulb than anything spaceworthy. The engines were keeping it aloft, but there was an unnatural stillness about it, like debris floating through space.

“Again.”

Blaster adjusted settings on the ship’s communications hub and leaned into the mic.

“Rodimus, come in Rodimus. This—”

There was a crackle and buzz as the ship’s receiver finally picked up a signal.

“This is Rodi—ack, _Ratchet_ , this is Ratchet. We read you.”

Blaster’s shoulders relaxed as he transferred primary input to the third in command’s station, but Magnus did not match his relief. Underneath the fritz of the shuttle’s poorly maintained equipment, Ratchet’s voice was shaking.

“Ratchet, this is Ultra Magnus. Report.”

“Report. Report… um, Arcee’s gone. We lost her. Satellite. Crash. Is Cyclonus there?”

“No. What is your—”

“Get him,” Ratchet interrupted.

“Where is Rodimus?” Magnus asked. Ratchet was supposed to be one of the good ones, recognizing his place within the chain of commands. Making demands was out of character for him.

“Here! I’m here,” Rodimus’ voice crackled down the line. “Present. Available. Get Cyclonus.”

Magnus sent the ping and tagged it _urgent_. Cyclonus had never been known for tardiness, but that put it on the record.

“What is your status?” he asked as he acknowledged Cyclonus’ response.

“Good! Weird? Ratchet is banged up, which is bad. He suffered impact shock in his lower spinal strut, chance there’s a disk… how do I…”

Magnus’ orbital ridge twitched, a coding bug when expression protocols tried to assign a profile to stress of unknown origin. He wiped the cache, regaining his neutral set, and sent a command to have the speeders approach the shuttle. Visual on the command deck would be helpful, but flight integrity was his main concern. If neither Rodimus nor Ratchet was in the right mind to pilot, they would need to engage in emergency grounding maneuvers.

“Ratchet, are you still there? Rodimus sounds incoherent; what is his status?”

“He’s _fine_.” His voice was briefly drowned out by shuffling and crashing on the other end. “—cessor’s functioning normally. It’s _loud_ , but it’s working.”

“He’s overheating?” Magnus asked.

“Not his fans, his _thoughts_.”

“Is his comm link malfunctioning?”

“He’s _bright_ like the goddamn sun. I can barely get two words in. Will you _shut that off?_ ”

“Ratchet?” Speeders were closing in.

“Not _you_.”

“Stop _yelling_ at me!” Rodimus snapped, volume raising and lowering like he was pacing around the microphone. “I heard you the first time.”

“I don’t see _how_. I can barely hear myself.”

“Aw, poor Rodimus, doesn’t get to hear his own voice.”

“ _You’re_ Rodimus, that’s _my line_.”

“Rodimus, Ratchet, Waverider is en route to board,” Ultra Magnus interjected. “If you are able, please lower the hatch for arrival, otherwise he will engage emergency stove—”

“No, don’t!”

It wasn’t just that they shouted at the same time, but that Rodimus and Ratchet’s voices matched in pitch, tone, and cadence which caused Magnus, for the third time in his life, to forget what he had been saying.

“Is Cyclonus there?” Rodimus asked.

“There’s something on board,” Ratchet said. “Don’t know what it is, but you can’t let anyone else get near it.”

“It did a weird thing. I’m Rodimus, but also I’m Ratchet? And both?”

“Those sound like the same things, Rodimus,” Magnus said, half distracted as he instructed Waverider to return to position.

“They’re not,” Ratchet said.

“Sir?” Cyclonus’ voice came as a blessing. Magnus gestured him forward.

“Cyclonus just arrived,” he announced. “Cyclonus, Rodimus and Ratchet uncovered something on Arcee’s shuttle. It’s…” He blanked.

“I can _feel_ Ratchet’s processor,” Rodimus said, rushing like it would make any of this comprehensible. “He’s thinking and it’s all really fast and hard, but it’s not rough like you would expect? Like, the feeling of grit in your gears, I thought it would be like that, but it’s more like there’s just a _lot_ of gears and it takes a lot of power to turn them all, and it’s too hard to decide whether to focus on just one or the entire thing. And he keeps thinking about me and my thoughts and how they’re _not_ like that, and I’m thinking about him, and then I get stuck because all the thoughts start to sound the same and I don’t know which ones came from me or which are Ratchet or even which me _is_ me. It’s all a big thought reservoir, a—a thought battle, an entire brain war and I don’t know which side I’m on!”

Cyclonus’ gaze was steady at the screen. Once it was clear that Rodimus was done, he leaned over the microphone.

“Can you send an image of the object?” he asked.

“Sure,” Ratchet said.

Blaster raised his hand.

“Image received.”

Ultra Magnus nodded and the feed of the shuttle was replaced with a still capture, a calamity of wires and light that took his visual center a full millisecond to parse.

“It’s the Enigma of Combination,” Cyclonus said.

“What’s that?” He could differentiate the orbital plating of the object itself and the red dwarf dew drop at its center, but the light it cast on its surroundings made his spark flicker with a disturbing fuzz.

“A plague,” Cyclonus said. “Considered a long-lost relic even in my own time. I would doubt this was the legitimate article, if Rodimus hadn’t so perfectly summarized its less infamous effects.”

“It can do more?” Magnus asked. What it had already done— _whatever_ it had done, he still was not clear on the details—seemed itself too much for a bot to handle. Or two.

Cyclonus hesitated.

“Well, you see…”

  
  


“No. No, no, _so much no_ , you’re _kidding_. Ratchet, tell me they’re kidding!”

“I don’t bloody well know!” he snapped back. He had sunk back into the pilot’s chair while Rodimus paced the bridge. His spark was spinning like a centrifuge, its engine overfed by the deluge of panicked thoughts tumbling through his mind. It was all _Cyclonus_ and _shuttle_ and _Arcee_ and _combination_ and _Drift_ , new threads knocking each other out of the way so nothing could reach a conclusion, just endless half-thoughts pinged repeatedly. Worst was when Rodimus tripped over the junk now scattered across the bridge as it brought everything to a shuddering halt, like a whole expressway’s worth of engines seized up simultaneously.

He pressed his hands to his face and tried to focus on keeping his vents open, ignoring the storm of queries of _Is Ratchet overheating?_ and _Drift is going to_ kill _me._

“I can’t be in a combiner with Ratchet!”

 _He hates me he hates me he hates me_ rattled around their processors like screws in a box.

“The Enigma has determined otherwise,” Cyclonus said.

So now the damn thing was having its own thoughts?

“It’s _thinking_ ?” Rodimus asked, earning an additional glare from Ratchet.

“No one knows,” Cyclonus said. “It’s ancient technology, built on the same principles that govern sparks.” Principles that even modern science knew so little about. Ratchet was going to say it but froze when he felt Rodimus grab for it, tossing at it a hundred questions he had no answers to: _Is that thing a person_ and _Where do sparks come from_ and _Would this stop if we broke it_ followed by another run of apologies.

“The Enigma has you in a holding pattern,” Cyclonus went on. “There aren’t enough of you to form the combiner, so it’s keeping your sparks connected until it can interface with at least one more Cybertronian.”

Ratchet saw the image that formed in Rodimus’ mind and his glower deepened.

“I don’t have the knowledge or the skills to disconnect something like that,” he said. “Sparks are _complicated_ , Rodimus, and there’s still so much we don’t know about them. I didn’t even think it was possible to maintain a connection of this magnitude without direct contact.” Rodimus’ next idea was even worse. “Have you met your crew? The moment you put it in a box and tell no one to look, Brainstorm, Skids, _and_ Whirl are all going to make breaking into it their personal quest.”

“Isolating the Enigma will not contain its effects,” Cyclonus added. “Because the holding pattern is an open channel, you have become conduits for the Enigma’s energies. If even one of you encounters another compatible component, it will complete the process, regardless of its distance from you.”

Rodimus stilled, then sunk to the floor, his thoughts miserably coalescing into a single thread.

“So, either we drag someone else into this mess, or we’re stuck in this shuttle, trying to think over each other forever?” _Forever_ was steeped in darker emotions that caught Ratchet off-guard, which Rodimus immediately covered up with nonsense branches of observations about the junk on the floor. A negativity storm, Drift would have called it.

From behind, he heard Rodimus chuckle, though his thoughts betrayed little amusement.

“If I may,” Cyclonus said, interrupting no one. “Ratchet, I do respect you as a physician, but modern medicine is not the only source of knowledge concerning the Cybertronian body. Even modern theology, shallow thought it may be, offers insights to the nature of sparks that your specialty lacks.”

“No.” Ratchet scowled and shook his head, though more so at the way he felt Rodimus stirring that observation than the idea itself. “None of the woo-woo nonsense. Drift’s mindfulness agility course was bad enough.”

Unfortunately, his words made Rodimus’s thoughts expand in blooms, accompanied by shuffling as he stood to lean over the pilot’s chair.

“Drift was always trying to get me into his meditation thing,” he said. “He—he talked about the Rossum connection, how the mind impacts the spark and vice-versa. It was mostly, you know, power poses and cool sword moves, but there was more advanced stuff we didn’t get around to.”

“It could be a lead,” Cyclonus said, his grave voice somehow failing to make a dent in Rodimus’ growing enthusiasm. “I know very little about Spectralism, but if it involves manipulation of spark energies, there is a chance it could be used to counteract the effects of the Enigma.”

“Yeah, remember how Drift can see auras?” Rodimus said. “Maybe he can _see_ where we’re tangled and just undo the knot.”

“There is _no_ scientific backing to that kind of pandering—”

_But we don’t have any other ideas._

Rodimus drew him up short, his own dearth of creativity reflected back to him as though in a mirror. Loathe though he was to admit it, Rodimus was right: they had nothing else. No leads, no one to fall back on. Cybertron’s history, the ancient mythologies that might have shed light on this technology, was lost to war and time, and all that was left was the third, fourth-hand accounts of people who claimed to know what was lost.

There was a chance Drift would have nothing to offer them, but even the possibility of guidance was an improvement over the helplessness Ratchet felt when he tried to imagine them fixing this on their own.

He received an image burst: Drift, wild and beautifully unhinged, leaping for the chance to care for Ratchet with literally open arms. Rodimus shut it down, distracting himself by counting rivets in the bridge ceiling, but vibrating embarrassment persisted between them.

“Would it be appropriate to call Drift for this?” Ultra Magnus asked, pulling the further from their internal squirming. “The truth about his role in the Overlord plan came out months ago, and since we’ve made no effort to contact him. To approach him now so he can solve this seems exploitative.”

Ratchet caught only the yellow of Rodimus’ hand before the captain vaulted over the back of the pilots’ chair, landing with a solid _bang_.

“I’ll take the blame,” he said.

“For what?” Ratchet asked, though he could already see it.

“For not fixing this sooner,” Rodimus said. He shrugged, a movement so automatic Ratchet did not pick up who it had been directed to. “I’m the captain. It was my responsibility and I failed. That shouldn’t doom Ratchet to having to live with my mistakes.”

He avoided Ratchet’s optics as he spoke, but Ratchet still caught his expression, the shiver of his spoiler as he spoke. It struck him that the reason Rodimus was so hard to read from an external perspective was because a single look meant so many things: frustration, guilt, grief, and hope piling on top of each other too quickly to discern where any one emotion rooted. His thoughts were going in so many directions all the time, of course it would be a challenge for everyone else to keep up.

“How do you intend to locate Drift?” Ultra Magnus asked, ever pragmatic.

“I have a tracker,” Ratchet said.

“I memorized the specifications for his shuttle,” Rodimus added, his processor spitting out the codes in full.

“And will that ship be adequate? Do you need additional supplies?”

Ratchet turned in the seat, looking around the scattered contents of the bridge, to say nothing of what their collision might have done to the storage down below. Despite the mess, he saw what looked like intact crates of potable energon, and the shuttle’s own systems were not in imminent danger of running dry.

“We’re stocked,” he said, and catching Rodimus’ primary concern, went on, “Unless Cyclonus know how far the Enigma’s effect extends, it’s going to be too risky to dock back in the _Lost Light_. We’ll make due with what’s here.”

“I’ll have Rewind compile you a list of known energon distributors with minority Cybertronian populations. That will be your best opportunity to refuel without risking exposure, should the need arise.”

 _Could the Enigma grab non-Cybertronian mechanicals?_ Rodimus wondered, a query Ratchet did not have the energy to entertain.

“Thanks, Mags,” Rodimus said out loud. “Take care of the place while we’re gone; you know the drill.”

“Of course, Rodimus. Uh, stay safe?”

Rodimus laughed, a sound that Ratchet felt as a golden thread, spun in a ripple through space before vanishing to nothing. He squinted, trying to make sense of what the hell that had been, but Rodimus’ burst of enthusiasm and plans for the coming journey overwhelmed him.

“Don’t worry, Ratchet’s pride will make sure I get back in one piece.”

_You—!_

It was going to be a long journey to the outer rim. Though Rodimus was grinning cheekily, the tense coil at the center of his thoughts agreed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My favorite scene from the first half of the fic :D The chaos! The blunt honesty! It was a fun one both times around.


	6. Just Another One

They could have left the last stage of planetbreak to autopilot, but Ratchet kept his hands wrapped around the yoke. If there was damage the shuttle’s sensors had missed, he said, better to have someone sentient piloting. Rodimus nodded along with his logic, like he hadn’t been aware the moment Ratchet decided he would do everything in his power to distract himself from… all this.

Rodimus had little room to feel offended. He was trying to dd the same, exploring the shuttle’s interface while background threads worked through anything he might have forgotten in their haste to leave. He hadn’t gotten around to telling the engineers about the ominous blinking panel in engine room 3, and he’d neglected to pick a replacement judge for the upcoming karaoke contest. His consciousness slipped between these background thoughts and exploration and Ratchet’s piloting, both of them trying so hard not to acknowledge the other than they jumped when the alarm went off.

_“Frag.”_

Rodimus grabbed for controls that failed to materialize in front of him.

“What?” he demanded, looking to the monitors for an incoming projectile despite the answer pooling in his mind.

“Haven’t reached exit velocity,” Ratchet said, punching commands into the console with one hand firm on the yoke. “Forgot how much power it takes to get these old war rigs moving. I’m adjusting the flightpath to buy us time to build momentum.” The alarm stopped. “There.”

Ratchet’s words were echoes of his thoughts, old knowledge by the time they reached Rodimus’ audials. Ratchet didn’t know how to fix that problem. Rodimus hadn’t realized it was a problem. Conversations between them were already a challenge, to add this new dimension was—

They were thinking about each other’s thoughts again. Rodimus rapidly shifted between menu options until the flashing light dragged him back out of his head.

“This sucks,” he said.

Ratchet grunted. He couldn’t keep up with all of Rodimus’ thoughts at once, and even hanging onto one was a strain, so he was trying to create hard divides between them. Right now, he was generating a list of all the medical supplies one could expect to find on a ship this size, basing it on a combination of Autobot guidelines and the kinds of repairs he had seen on POWs. Rodimus’ processor tried to latch on, but the thick jargon kept him slipping off, back to exploring the workings of their new home.

No, was home not the right word? The place they were living? Where they were captive? Their cosmic questing raft? The Decepticraft? The _Drifter_?

Ratchet withdrew the tracker from his subspace, ignoring the way plinking ideas sunk into his thoughts like lead nuggets into molten cadmium. Autobot and Decepticon tech was not designed to be compatible, but he had performed enough surgeries with parts scavenged from the battlefield to know how to jury rig the connection. As he pulled out a small utility knife, he thought sadly of the universal adapter he had stashed with the rest of his medical supplies, all of it now sailing away to parts unknown. Though he would knock a dent into Arcee if they ever caught up to her, he did hope his kit was getting put to use.

Rodimus wondered how long Ratchet had been preparing for his trip, when the planning had started (at the vote? Overlord?), how he could have missed it. Ratchet recoiled from the blunt curiosity and his list fell apart, dumped out of short term memory as his processor scrambled to pull up the answers to Rodimus’ questions.

_Mistake, mistake, mistake._

“Just—stop,” Ratchet said, waving at Rodimus like he could dispel the corrosive thoughts with a gesture.

 _How do I stop? Does it hurt? You’re so quiet? Are you okay? Does it hurt? What do I do?_ Rodimus had never had reason to stop his processor before, and the effort of trying to now was making it worse.

Ratchet, though, had a lifetime’s experience forcing himself to focus in stressful situations. He stopped responding to Rodimus’ questions, and the thoughts that did come through were focused entirely on his hands as he stripped down the tracker’s cable. Once a physical connection had been established, he would need to register the tracker as a pilot in the navicomp, then reroute the transceivers in the shuttle’s communications array to increase their range.

His calm confidence guided Rodimus’ focus. The stream of questions would not abate, but they were no longer provoked from panic, nor did they interrupt Ratchet’s process.

_Will it accept an Autobot ident?_

Some even turned out to be helpful.

“Probably not,” Ratchet said, their connection helping Rodimus pinpoint which of his thoughts Ratchet was responding to. “Not a problem, I can just program a new one… dammit.”

The computer flashed red: outdated codes.

“Who was stationed on this ship they would bother updating their security?” Ratchet wondered aloud, his processor trying to piece together a workaround simpler than taking apart the entire navigation system.

Rodimus hesitated, but Ratchet caught it, so there was no point to staying quiet.

“Prowl passed me some intel before we left,” he said.

“Hm.” Ratchet’s thoughts turned _sharp,_ a phantom pain that caused Rodimus to wince.

“Codes,” he said. “Just in case.”

He hadn’t asked where Prowl had gotten them, though Ratchet’s imagination filled in the gaps. Instead, Rodimus had been doing his best to appear professional and capable before Optimus’ infamous adviser. Prowl’s optics could not bother to emote for how unimpressed he was. That Rodimus had assumed this meeting concerning “galactic relations” would be about culture clash with their closest neighbors had not helped his image.

He had nearly run out of the office when Ultra Magnus commed to say he was actually late for another meeting, stopped only by the datapad forced his way.

“A few precautions,” Prowl had called it. Rodimus downloaded the files and stored them among the events on Kimia, tech specs for the waste disposal system, and other things he could willingly not think about.

Ratchet’s hand, poised over the keyboard, clenched and shook itself out.

“I hope you ran a virus scan on that thing before you plugged it into yourself,” he said, doing a commendable job not bringing up everything this subject of conversation was making him think about.

“No, but I passed it through my antivirals.” And it didn’t feel like Prowl was remote controlling him from the opposite side of the galaxy. He doubted Prowl had the processing capacity to pilot him through multiple rounds of volcanic derby racing, for one.

“Here.” Ratchet retrieved his portable med kit from his subspace and set it on his lap. The lists were moving back in: everything he’d lost versus what he had to work with now. Rodimus found himself sobered and accepted the antiviral chip when it was passed to him. “Load this and run another scan. You might experience a few seconds lag or disorientation; just ride it out and let the chip do its job.” A few very rare cases experienced sensory inversion, but longterm effects were uncommon enough Ratchet wouldn’t bother to mention them.

Rodimus cracked a grin as he popped open a port cover and inserted the chip. He grimaced as he installed the program—invasive medical programs were rarely comfortable to integrate—then ran Prowl’s files through it.

So, there had been a tracking signal that Rodimus’ programs had failed to uncover, but once that had been snipped out the rest were deemed safe. Rodimus tightbeamed the data to Ratchet who used it to finish building their fake Decepticon and finally got through. ‘Galeforce’ finished integrating the tracker and set the system to start searching for Drift’s signal.

“Thanks,” Ratchet said, a longer pause than normal between thinking the word and saying it out loud. Internal distractions compounded and inevitably led them to crashing into each other, so maybe talking would redirect enough of their attention to stop the spiraling before it could start.

Rodimus chanced a glance at him but could not catch his optic; he was still focused on the controls.

“No problem,” he said. Drift had once wasted a full off-shift failing to teach him how to meditate. The problem had not been Drift’s teaching: it was all Rodimus and his inability to let a thought go once it manifested. It was like they stuck him, coils of barbed wire wrapped round and around, each pinprick demanding his attention and—”How far is it to the outer rim?”

“Depends where we’re going, and if Drift’s on the move,” Ratchet said. The screen of the navicomp blinked, a pinwheel replacing the previous screen. “Might find somewhere to get comfortable. This part’s been known to go for a few hours.”

“Hours?” Rodimus repeated. Anything that could have once been considered comfortable was covered in junk. The captain’s chair had belonged to Ratchet before they had taken off, and the flight deck chairs were too abandoned to feel secure.

“The transceiver on Drift’s speeder isn’t strong enough to send a direct signal,” Ratchet said. “It’s going to have to bounce between Galactic Council transmission planets a bit before it makes it back here.” Assuming Drift had strayed close enough for one to grab his signal. From what Ratchet understood, though, they were almost impossible to avoid these days. “Whatever we get’s going to be a few days old, but it’s a start.”

Rodimus’ processor drew up a cartoonish map, a dotted line zigzagging between planets to show the path Drift’s signal would take. He recoiled from under Ratchet’s scrutiny, but all his haste could add was a backdrop of randomized stars.

“While we’re waiting, I’ve got us on course to slingshot around Scarvix’s star,” Ratchet went on. A note of surprise: Rodimus’ stress had caused his own cables to tense. “By the time the tracker gets us some coordinates, we should be ready to… This isn’t helping.”

Rodimus was distressed and Ratchet was spiraling. How were they going to make it all the way to the outer rim? What would they do if Drift had nothing for them? Refused to help? Rodimus couldn’t keep tying himself in knots, nor could he endure the sting every time Ratchet anguished over a possible future trapped together.

“I distract myself.” Rodimus forced his voice through the fog.

“How?” Ratchet was gripping the edge of the captain’s seat, squeezing until the hard edge reminded him which body was his.

“A lot of things work: racing, fight,” Rodimus said. “Anything that could get me out of my head for a few minutes.”

Meteor surfing, free all skydiving, asteroid spelunking. Any activity that teased the edge of mortality (crafting a spectacle was a bonus) was fair game. The rush of knowing he was solely responsible for the continued light of his spark never failed to wipe his mind of the stress of everything else.

Ratchet could not relate. Nor could he imagine how they were going to fit a racetrack into a ship just a bit larger than Swerve’s. Sparring might have been an option, were it not for the fact that every step risked tripping and landing face first on something volatile.

The idea hit Rodimus and he groaned.

“What about—cleaning?” Ratchet gestured around them. “ _I_ don’t want to put up with this chaos for longer than I have to.”

And there was something nostalgic about it. After the destruction of his Rodion clinic, Ratchet started practicing performative minimalism; anything of purely sentimental value had to be kept on his person, out of harm’s way. Prior to that, his offices had been littered with evidence of a life lived mostly within their walls: chickenscratch notes immediately forgotten, used energon cubes, and fond mementos from old friends he would get around to calling one of these days, for sure. Over days and weeks it would pile up, until he was using his lap as a desk and had no choice but to sweep it all back into a configuration resembling tidiness.

Rodimus balked at Ratchet’s fondness of those memories. Cleaning for him was performed on hands and knees, tips of steel wool sticking into his finish as he worked rust out of wash rack corners. Back and forth over the same spot, over and over and over, until boredom pressed down like it intended him to become one with the floor.

“Punishment detail,” he said, though Ratchet had already guessed.

During the war he had bounced between barracks and military vessels, plugging into recharge docks still warm from their last occupant. How could he ever take pride over a cleaned room when neither the space nor the mess belonged to him? He had tried to improve his habits upon moving into the _Lost Light_ , but there were reasons Ultra Magnus refused to meet him at his hab suite.

“It’s not just about the space,” Ratchet said. “It’s an emotional reset. When you have time to clean, it means the fighting’s over for now.” Ratchet’s memories had lost hold of entire days stationed in field hospitals, brought back only as he had wiped down his instruments and organized his remaining supplies. Rubbing cleanser deep into his joints to free them of the day’s residue was one small kindness he could afford himself.

Rodimus shrugged and twisted in the seat so he could rest his chin on the back of it. He scanned the room. It certainly looked like a fight had gone through.

“Right.” Ratchet did one better than him and stood up. “You’ve got decent knees, so you can start by hauling those shelves back into place.”

“Decent knees?” Rodimus repeated, allowing himself to crack a grin. He shoved himself from the chair and wandered out into the swamp, tripping once as he felt something snap under his heel. “Old joint all worn out, doc?”

“Just got them replaced,” Ratchet corrected, “and I’d rather not break them in on a mess that wasn’t even my fault.” First Aid would let him have it, and he was already due for a tongue lashing whenever they got back to the _Lost Light_. “This can be your penance.”

 _“Penance.”_ Rodimus laughed through the word, though he was already maneuvering around the shelves in question, trying to guess which end would be easiest to lift from given the state of the floor around them. “Right, because I’m the one who put you on this ship in the first place.” Neither would have been out here if Ratchet had just asked to go get Drift.

Nor if Rodimus had gone first—not sent him away—prevented Overlord—

“Here,” Ratchet said, clearing some of the space Rodimus had been tiptoeing around. “Let’s start with this.”

They started together, Ratchet picking through whatever was in Rodimus’ way as he heaved the shelves upright, but their tasks caused them to drift apart, Ratchet sorting through his findings while Rodimus shoved the room back into a semblance of order. He drifted into a rhythm of lifting and pushing, occasionally grunting with the effort of returning the room to its previous state. This plan was derailed almost immediately: he’d had other things on his mind when he first rushed onto the bridge, and the placement of the various shelves and crates had missed his attention entirely. Even Ratchet’s memory of the layout was imperfect.

So, he got creative with it, using the shelves to form a divider between the cockpit and what would have been the command zone. He used the crates to fill in the gaps and form uneven benches along the walls, and as he took to shoving the broken pieces and miscellaneous ends into piles, the bridge started to take the shape of a living space. Ratchet, glancing up from his work only to remind Rodimus not to lift with his back, had no complaints about the design choices.

He spoke up again when Rodimus paused before one of the larger crates, considering it carefully.

“It’s not a bad idea,” he said, “but I doubt you’re the first to have it. Why would the Cons waste space with chairs when they’re already tripping over storage cubes?”

“You can’t _relax_ sitting on a block,” Rodimus said, although, he reflected, that was likely the point.

In the end, he settled for placing a couple smaller cubes on either side of the makeshift table, almost adding a third before he thought better of it and slotted it into a space on the wall, finally covering up the loosened panel from which red light continued to trickle. His cables relaxed and he became aware that he had been hearing a buzz (a melody?) in the back of his processor ever since the flare. The silence that swept in to fill the space was just as loud, but slightly less grating.

His optics swept the room; still chaotic, according to Ratchet, but Rodimus thought it was gaining a shape. Noticing that he had accidentally blocked the door at the back of the bridge, he went to clear it, and was surprised when it didn’t open automatically for him, nor did he see a control pad.

“Ident sensor,” Ratchet said. He had noticed it built into the upper frame of the door.

“What, more secret tech stashed back there?” Rodimus asked. Both their minds bloomed with possibilities, but Ratchet shut them down.

“Recharge docks, more likely,” he said. “We had similar systems on some of the larger warships. Kept bots to their assigned off-shifts.” On one occasion, a superior officer had tried to use the same tactic to lock Ratchet out of his medbay when he was supposed to be recharging. After the public fallout settled, no one else dared to try it. “I can rig up our transceivers with a couple more facsimiles, soon as I’m finished here.”

Rodimus grinned and waved up at the sensor. He thought he could feel a brush of radiation as it scanned him, but Ratchet rebuffed the notion; it wasn’t nearly that powerful.

If that was true, what was to stop the Decepticons from lacing their ships with invisible observation devices? What if it had already discovered the intruders and was sending alerts straight to the DJD who were—

_Fifteen pounds titanium alloys, ten pounds compressed carbon, eighty pounds halogen…_

Ratchet’s thoughts were calm, regular, and purposeful enough for Rodimus to latch on. He glanced around again. He could start clearing the stairs. Or sweeping up glass. He could create a designated pile of useful equipment, or check that all the navigation terminals were in working order, or perform a quick security sweep. So many options. So many ways to prove that he was taking this seriously and was ready to work to stay out of Ratchet’s way.

“Come here, Rodimus.”

Of course, thinking about his options accomplished none of them. Aware he would continue wasting time if left to his own devices, he complied, plopping down in front of Ratchet. He landed in a relaxed sprawl, his position calculated down to the bend of his fingers.

Ratchet glanced up to him, thoughts of energon stock briefly set aside.

“Maybe you should’ve paid more attention to those meditation lessons,” he said.

“Told you, it didn’t work.” Never mind that he hadn’t said that part out loud; it was the defining feature of that memory. Drift had tried so hard, patiently explaining each step and troubleshooting when Rodimus struggled. They had tried different techniques, positions, even locations, and at every one, Rodimus’ thoughts had caught up to him and refused to be ignored. And every time, Drift had nodded with gentle understanding and suggested something new to try.

Because that was who Drift was: patient, calm, nonjudgmental. A forged mentor.

Ratchet’s thoughts hit him like acid rain.

“Did you know your ‘best friend’ at _all?”_

Of course he did, he wanted to say. All the important bits! Like that he was more regimented than Magnus when it came to his refueling schedule: one cube at the start of duty shift, and one at off-shift, every single cycle. That with his years brought experience untold, solutions and advice always at the ready. That Drift had been, and still was, extremely dangerous.

But when he dove inward to find these answers, he discovered something else: another Drift, sharp, with tattered, ill-defined edges that nonetheless drew and intimidating silhouette. This Drift was cloaked not in radiant light, but wrapped himself in darkness like a shawl, and when he tried to speak it was in many voices, none of which Rodimus recognized.

“Real friends don’t worship the ground you walk on,” Ratchet was saying. “I know your perception’s skewed since you think you have to live up to the very scratches in Optimus’ finish, but that behavior’s not healthy and it’s not _normal_. Drift is a _real person_ , not some sort of—of fantasy fulfillment for you to drain until your hero complex is satisfied.”

Impatient, masking over constant stress, deeply critical of everyone but wrestling with his own failings: the other Drift’s hand appeared not with a sword, but a gun.

“I’m sorry.”

And vanished.

Ratchet released his death grip on an energon cube and set it aside.

“Not me you need to apologize to.”

“I know,” Rodimus said. “But you’re here, and it means something to you.”

“It doesn’t.” Ratchet’s lie was scratchy, like a frayed wire. “Drift’s made plenty of bad decisions in his life.” _You’re just another one._

_That’s not any of your business._

Habit kept them civil on the outside, but nothing, least of all self control, could stop them from thinking their truths. Drift had taken his post-war freedom and handed it straight to Rodimus, his dripping optimism like a fresh protoform faith. He had taken every dirty, demeaning job the _Lost Light_ required of him, because he was good at them, because he wanted to help, because it was the only thing he knew how to do, because Rodimus had asked. Rodimus had taken advantage of, given an opportunity to, betrayed, saved, sacrificed—trying his best and couldn’t help that—

“Cleaning,” Ratchet said. “Cleaning.”

It took Rodimus a second just to find his body, then remember the piles of cubes stacked between them.

“What?” he asked. Even with a mental warning, he startled at the cleaning rag that landed on him.

“Some of the cubes were damaged in the crash, but it’s impossible to tell which when they’re piled together like this,” Ratchet said. He picked one from the pile and nested it in his own rag, diligently wiping away the loose energon before he unwrapped it and held it to the light. “Clean ‘em and check for damage. Get a leaker, pour it into the can with the rest. We can feed them to the ship’s reserve cells.”

The flight time bought by even a full crate’s worth of cubes would be negligible, but that wasn’t the point. Rodimus took a cube off the top of the nearest pile, feeling along the buckled edges. Were it just his own head to deal with, it might have been enough, but Ratchet’s still burning fury would not be so easily shut off.

“He _volunteered,”_ Rodimus said.

Had he? Ratchet hadn’t known that. Rather than calm him, though, the new information made the fire in his spark burn hotter.

“I’m not having this conversation,” he said.

The cube hit the floor with an unsatisfying thud and Rodimus stood up.

 _“Whatever.”_ He had a taste of grim satisfaction watching Ratchet freeze.

“Don’t—” Ratchet started, but Rodimus cut him off.

“I get it,” he said. “You hate me. I’m _used_ to it. I get people hating me for who I am way before they find out all the slagged choices I’ve made. But when you’re—you—”

Ratchet was treating Drift like a drone, unable to make any choice beyond its core programming, and Rodimus the cruel engineer who delighted in watching it shock itself. Rodimus could take lashing Ratchet delivered, but objectifying Drift and calling it righteous was a step too far.

“Except that’s not what I’m saying,” Ratchet said. His voice was steady and he stayed seated; he did not try to chase Rodimus. “Of course Drift is self-sufficient. I’ve never doubted that. And I believe you that he volunteered, because it’s the exact kind of glitched plan he would come up with. But the world is bigger than you, Rodimus.”

He _knew—_

Drift pledging life and spark to a leader whose words struck a thousand furnaces. Cast through self-revolutions of building and breaking himself, each new face patterned after what the last one lacked. Fighting his way up an eroding cliff face of rejection, reaching out…

“It’s more than you,” Ratchet said. “Drift might have volunteered. But I’ve got to check your conductors for rust if you think he _wanted_ to go.”

“I know, but…” If Drift wanted salvation, who was Rodimus to deny him?

“His _friend,_ allegedly.” Though Ratchet seethed with the word, there was a hidden gentleness behind it. Drift needed friends.

Rodimus had never considered that. He knew Drift was not well liked among some Autobots, a target of suspicion if not outright hostility, but Rodimus had always seen him rise above it. Strong and steadfast and as confident in himself as he was, isolation seemed no weight on his struts.

“He’s just a bot like any other,” Ratchet said. Well. Not _any_ other. Neither knew anyone quite like Drift. “He gets slagged ideas, too, and as his friend, you’re supposed to _tell_ him that.”

Ratchet had never hesitated to tell Optimus when he was being an idiot. Not much good it had done them all in the end, but memories of yelling at the Prime while elbow-deep in his wiring helped break the tension that had crystallized between them.

“I messed up,” Rodimus said quietly.

Ratchet gestured to the floor on the other side of the cube pile.

“You did,” he said, shaking his head at Rodimus’ ripe disappointment. “What do you want me to do? Say you tried your best and forgive you? You’re _right_ , Rodimus. Whatever your reasons for not acting sooner, Drift’s the one who has to deal with your consequences.”

“I’m scared,” Rodimus admitted as he took a seat again. He picked up the cube he had been checking before and looked it over: no leaks. He put it in the intact pile and retrieved the next. “I liked what we had before, and I’m scared Drift’s going to hate me now that his big sacrifice turned out to be for nothing.”

“What you had before wasn’t sustainable,” Ratchet said. He had moved back into his own rhythm, optics on his hands while he spoke to Rodimus. “Want to talk about objectifying? You treated Drift like a personal worshiper.”

Rodimus ducked his helm. It _sucked_ to feel Ratchet’s scrutiny even without those fierce optics on him, but he knew it was deserved. It had just been so _nice_ to feel _appreciated_ for once. To have someone tell him, without disclaimer or exception, that he was good at something and could help people. Everyone else was always searching for his flaw; Drift had been the first to explore Rodimus with the intention to find his virtues. It was the praise Rodimus missed most, second only to the camaraderie, and even while acknowledging it was for the best, it still stung to know he couldn’t have that back.

Ratchet set down a cube and did not immediately reach for another one.

“I can’t make any guarantees about what Drift will do, but I think you would actually find friendship without aftkissing to be _more_ rewarding,” he said.

 _But I liked that,_ Rodimus thought, to his horror. Ratchet rolled his optics.

_I’m sure you did._

“Of course,” he said out loud. “And you never doubted it? Never once thought, ‘Hey, this level of devotion from a bot I haven’t shared three words with is a little weird’?”

 _No._ But a few moments slipped in from Rodimus’ memories. When Drift told him about his affiliation ceremony, there were embers of a once blazing inferno glowing behind his optics, a side of the ex-Decepticon that Rodimus told himself was but a lingering echo. Drift had given up that kind of passion on his road to atonement. At least, Rodimus had convinced himself as much.

“He told you exactly what you wanted to hear, knowing you would fill in the gaps,” Ratchet said. “He _is_ a survivalist.” And to have survived so much, only to once more find himself without a home or support was a mockery of justice and everything Ratchet had believed the Autobots stood for.

That was why he needed to leave.

“And you’re getting your new chance because of it,” he said. “You didn’t earn it, but you’re getting one anyway. And if you really meant that apology, you’ll do something different this time.”

Rodimus knew that, could internalize the idea, but when so much of what he did felt like an externally sourced script running of its own volition, he struggled to make it a guarantee. He could intend, with every fiber of every cable, to do better the second time around. But so often the pressure of potential disappointment became its own self-fulfilling prophecy.

“Well, so long as we’re stuck together, you won’t be alone,” Ratchet said. “I’ll be there. I won’t let you do that to him.”

“Okay,” Rodimus said. He had heard promises like that before, from bot who promised to support him only to turn tailpipe once they learned what that meant.

But now he could feel Ratchet’s resolve. Not to Rodimus, to whom his emotions were turbulent and untrustworthy, but to Drift and giving him what life would otherwise conspire to keep away. He thought Drift a fool for the role he had assigned himself at Rodimus’ side, but he would not deny him his agency if that was something he wanted to regain.

The navicomp beeped. They stood simultaneously and Ratchet moved back to the captain’s chair to inspect the screen.

“We’ve got a hit,” he said. “Vitreous.” An organic planet, according to the report. Neither of their databanks could produce any further information.

“A week?” Rodimus’ voice was tight as Ratchet scanned the details.

“Give or take,” he said. “If we need to refuel, that will add a couple days.”

“Sure.” Rodimus was trying very hard not to think about what a week of _this_ would be like.

Ratchet was doing it enough for both of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter and the next are the real reasons I wanted to revise the beginning of this fic. Which is probably why I put them off for so long. I spent all of January working on the second draft of this chapter, and the third (the published version) took another two weeks.
> 
> I can’t even keep track of everything that got changed. This whole section needed a lot more structure and momentum, which, it turns out, are hard to achieve when your setup is two guys alone on a spaceship for a week (which, now that I’ve written it out, would be perfect if the goal of this fic was pure smut u_u alas). I also needed a better setup for the conflicts they're going to encounter when they finally catch up to Drift. As it is, I think this is as good as I’m going to get it.
> 
> Also, I originally called the planet they’re heading to Scarvix. I knew it sounded familiar but assumed it was just something I’d picked up from other TF media. Well, turns out, Scarvix is the name of the planet they literally just left :P Whoops.
> 
> Not unreasonable to expect the next chapter’s going to be two weeks, too. Progress is happening, just slow right now.

**Author's Note:**

> Updates Fridays (weekly or every other depending on whether the writing brain behaves). You can follow me on [Tumblr](https://libermachinae.tumblr.com/) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/libermachinae) if you would like to stay updated on progress!


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